Patriotism, a vehicle used despicably to camouflage Romanian anti-Semitism

Patriotism is the mask under which Romanian anti-Semitism hides, a phenomenon that has experienced an unprecedented escalation in the last year, according to the Monitoring Report for the period May 2025-April 2026, a document published yesterday by the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania "Elie Wiesel". The cited source shows that, unfortunately, anti-Semitism is no longer a marginal phenomenon in our country, isolated in obscure circles, radical groups or clandestine publications, but has aggressively penetrated political discourse, in Parliament, in the press, on social networks, in public institutions, in schools, in cultural spaces and in stadiums, where messages against Jews, conspiracy theories, the cult of legionnaires and attempts to rehabilitate war criminals are spread in front of audiences of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

At the same time, the figures in the report demonstrate that propaganda has profound effects on society: at the end of 2025, 40% of Romanians believed that Jews "act to destabilize the society in which they live", 18 percentage points more than in 2021, 35% supported limiting the number of Jews in certain professions, 29% blamed them for the establishment of communism, and 11% considered the Jewish minority "a problem" or "a threat", a share almost double that recorded four years earlier.

The survey conducted by Social Monitor for the "Elie Wiesel" Institute, between November 1-15, 2025, on a sample of 1,004 people, shows how much the anti-Semitism has spread in a society bombarded daily with disinformation. No less than 56% of respondents believe that Jews "only pursue their own interests", 42% accept the conspiracy theory according to which Jews own three million apartments in Romania, 39% believe that Jews use the Holocaust for their own interests, 30% claim that they use the Holocaust to blackmail Romania, and 25% believe that they do it to denigrate the country. In just four years, the share of those who believe that the memory of the victims of the Holocaust must be kept alive has decreased by 18 percentage points, even though this remains, for now, the majority, at 82%. The figures do not describe only an information crisis, but the cracking of historical memory and the transformation of prejudices into an acceptable social perception. The cited document mentions that social networks have become the main conduit through which anti-Semitic theories are pumped into society. Accounts with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers spread theories about an alleged Jewish domination over Romania, about millions of apartments prepared for a so-called invasion from Israel, about Jewish control over the press, finance, justice, secret services, the political class or major technological platforms. Some messages reach tens of thousands of views, and others exceed the threshold of one million. Instead of being pushed to the edge of the public space, they are taken up in online talk shows, transformed into TikTok clips, distributed on Facebook, X, Telegram, YouTube, Instagram or Rumble and legitimized by the presence of former parliamentarians, journalists, reserve officers, teachers, lawyers, artists and political leaders.

A monitoring carried out through NewsVibe identified 1,900 posts and articles about characters associated with Romania's fascist past or the Holocaust. Of these, 67% had a neutral tone, 28% negative and 5% positive, but only the 91 positive or apologetic materials generated an estimated impact of almost 900,000 views. The assessment does not even include audio-video content on YouTube and TikTok, where audiences for some denialist or anti-Semitic shows frequently reach tens of thousands or exceed 100,000 views. The report identified 34 websites and blogs that published anti-Semitic, conspiratorial, denialist or apologetic content towards the Legionary Movement and war criminals, some of them publishing such materials with a frequency of one or two times a week.

The Elie Wiesel Institute experts argue that the new regulatory act on the matter, law no. 241/2025, which updated OUG no. 31/2002 and law no. 157/2018, became the detonator of the largest wave of hatred recorded during the monitored period.

In February 2026, the New Right and the Romanian Identity Community organized a protest in front of the Institute for the repeal of legislation against anti-Semitism, fascism, legionnaires'ism and Holocaust denial. The increase in hatred was accompanied by the return of the cult of legionnaire figures and people convicted of war crimes. Radu Gyr, Mircea Vulcănescu, Valeriu Gafencu, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Octavian Goga, Vintilă Horia and Nichifor Crainic were presented in various public contexts exclusively as poets, intellectuals, anti-communist martyrs, patriots or defenders of the faith, with the deliberate elimination of their involvement in fascist movements, anti-Semitic propaganda or convictions for war crimes. Public institutions hosted commemorative events, libraries organized apologetic book launches, and the Romanian Academy and affiliated structures celebrated personalities whose role in consolidating the interwar far right was passed over in silence, the cited report shows.

The experts of the Elie Wiesel Institute are also dissatisfied with the fact that the city halls of Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timişoara and other localities continue to preserve streets, busts or names associated with people from the fascist past or convicted of war crimes. The cited document shows that the educational system in our country fails to repair this memory deficit, unlike the one in Germany. In Romania, information about the Holocaust is provided mainly through television, the internet and social networks, while the role of education remains reduced. In the reserve version of the Romanian Baccalaureate subjects of June 10, 2025, a fragment of Nichifor Crainic's memoirs was introduced, without contextualizing his role in fascist propaganda and in the governments of the extreme right. In some textbooks on the History of Communism, the legionnaires are presented exclusively as victims of communist repression, without differentiating between the democratic and fascist opposition.

The report notes, however, that the reaction of public authorities has become more visible, but remains disproportionate to the scale of the phenomenon. The Prosecutor General showed that, before November 2024, an average of 21 cases were registered annually regarding anti-Semitic speech, incitement to hatred and the promotion of legionnairesism, while after the end of that year the average rose to 682 cases. However, experts from the Elie Wiesel Institute believe that the increase in the number of criminal cases does not automatically mean efficiency, because in practice many cases remain unresolved for years, others are dismissed, and final or first-instance convictions frequently end with suspended sentences. For example, according to the data in the report, a man who had made 540 ads and 356 sales through OLX of fascist and legionary objects was sentenced to two years in prison with a suspended sentence. Other examples in this regard are a young man who vandalized the Jewish Cemetery in Bacău and who received a year and two months with a suspended sentence, the author of the threats against the "Elie Wiesel" Institute, Theodor Paleologu, Dana Hering and Marcel Bartic was sentenced to a year and five months with a suspended sentence and was banned from using social networks for the purpose of publishing content for three years. Moreover, a complaint against a religion teacher accused of spreading pro-legionnaire messages in class was closed, with the prosecutor and judge assessing that there was not sufficient public interest in continuing the criminal prosecution.

The European Digital Services Regulation did not stop the avalanche of anti-Semitism either. According to the data in the document published yesterday, the "Elie Wiesel" Institute, as a trusted notifier, reported a number of 113 posts in 2025: 48 on Facebook, 30 on X, 28 on TikTok and seven on YouTube. Two of the platforms did not take action in approximately half of the reported cases, and some communicated that they had removed materials that remained accessible. Out of 60 orders issued by the CNA based on articles on incitement to violence, hatred, discrimination and racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic manifestations, only 35 led to the removal or restriction of the content. In 11 cases, the platforms did not respond, and in another ten they invoked the vagueness of the requests.

From the conclusions of the report, we note that the Romanian anti-Semitism of the years 2025-2026 no longer always bears the label in plain sight. It is camouflaged in the rhetoric of "anti-system”, in accusations against "globalism”, in the false defense of freedom of expression, in the glorification of the anti-communist resistance, in the alleged protection of the national culture or in the replacement of the word "Jew” with "Zionist”. Legitimate criticism of the policies of the state of Israel is transformed into a vehicle for resuming prejudices about Jewish control over the world, the press, finances and governments.

The Holocaust is compared to austerity, political adversities, the Gaza war or communist repressions, until the uniqueness of the extermination is diluted and the memory of the victims becomes a mere rhetorical weapon.